U.S. hospitals scramble to adopt new HHS coronavirus data system, some states see ‘data blackout’

U.S. hospitals scramble to adopt new HHS coronavirus data system, some states see ‘data blackout’

Healthcare workers move a patient in the Covid-19 Unit at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas Thursday, July 2, 2020.

Mark Felix | Getty Images

Hospitals and states are scrambling to adopt a new national Covid-19 data reporting system hastily implemented by the Trump administration last week that has left some, mostly rural, states in the dark about the severity of their own coronavirus outbreaks. 

The Department of Health and Human Services abruptly instructed all hospitals last week to stop reporting their coronavirus data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's long-standing National Healthcare Safety Network. Instead, hospitals were instructed to report the data to HHS through a new portal that went live on Monday. HHS gave hospitals two days to comply and tied their cooperation to the distribution of remdesivir, a vital drug used to treat Covid-19.

HHS officials said they made the move to ensure the federal government had more comprehensive and real-time data used to make important decisions, such as remdesivir distribution. But it's left some states without key information on their own Covid-19 outbreaks: coronavirus hospitalizations, available hospital beds and available ICU beds.

Left in the lurch

Some states don't collect the data themselves and rely on the CDC to assemble and share that information, which